Five Women and the Gora Sahib

My trip thus far has, on average, been great. It began a bit inauspiciously as I got scammed coming out of the airport. I didn’t see the driver for the hotel that I was going to stay at, and suddenly at my side an “airport employee” came to help. He took me to a phone booth where we called the hotel (but I think it was actually another number) and they claimed that my reservation was for the next day. So the kindly man helped me arrange a trip to a different hotel which charged me about 4x the going rate. I knew it was happening but wasn’t about to wander Mumbai with about 100 lbs of luggage at midnight. As a compromise, he included a beer and breakfast to assuage my anger.

For the trip, my friend Sameer arranged for me to have an assistant to help teach the class named Rasika. She was nice enough to come down to Mumbai to save me from the hotel people and serve as my guide for my time here. She’s proved invaluable for helping me get around and at the same time has cheerfully put up with my endless questions and shoddy attempts at Marathi (the regional language).

I’ve been staying with Sameer’s family out here and it makes all the difference. Not only am I not getting ripped off, but I feel like I’ve met half of Pune (the city I’m in) and its been a really cool way of getting to know this place. Actually for me its been a fantastic reminder of why I love and value ethnography as a method of learning and researching, as my experience here would be entirely different if I had been less flexible about our daily schedule.

On Sunday I went on a short trip with my friend’s mom (Hema), Rasika, three of their friends, and one of their grandchildren who was about 3 and was really cute but would speak to me in Marathi and didn’t understand my English replies. I don’t really know what he thought of me actually. We traveled to a nearby dam and spent the day walking around. It wasn’t long before Hema started using the term Gora Sahib for me, which means something like “white boss.” I’m hopeful that this means she is fond of me.

The trip was really great, we found some wild berries that were delicious but the insides were like glue if they touched anything but the insides of your mouth. I also got to experience my first sacred grove. Everyone was really nice, but they would often speak in Marathi, and while I sometimes got a translation later, I spent a lot of times making up conversations for them. They had a debate over whether a unicorn or a pegasus would win in battle (with one of them reminding them that they never would fight in real life). And one time we stopped for directions on where to find a snickers bar but then we forgot to stop and get one. They also told a lot of jokes, but timing the punchline was really difficult, apparently they aren’t very funny in Marathi.

All in all, Pune has been great thus far. I’m eating absolutely delicious food, my stomach is holding up, and the class is going swimmingly.

Stay tuned for the next episode of “The Gora Sahib.”